utterly macabre

so far this valentine’s day, i have slept an hour. for the past weekend i have been having massive asthma attacks that do not respond to my emergency inhaler. because i am bad at self care, because i think i am just overreacting and the feeling will pass, i have failed to see a doctor or seek help with this problem (somewhere, lynn is shuddering). naturally, it’s escalated, and i find myself now on monday morning, wide awake from coughing and general ache. my oh so acute skills of observation tell me that perhaps this isn’t strictly asthma, but may perhaps be some kind of cold or infection. at approximately 3:30 am, i resolve to call for a doctor’s appointment in the morning. at 4:30am, i look up 24 hour pharmacies to potentially seek out cough meds. at 5:00 am, i resist using my expired codeine cough syrup. at 5:05, i opt for a round of steroids that i didn’t take the last time i had an asthma crisis. at 5:10 i make tea. at 5:15, i email a professor to cancel our afternoon meeting. at 5:30 i sit down with my blog, neglected, too, for the better part of the new year.

what is this resistance to self-love? i assure you, it’s not a comfort with death that makes me so careless about sustaining my own life. i am terrified of dying. i have panic attacks about dying, that in turn trigger my asthma, which could in fact kill me. surely, i am not SO dense as to not understand the repercussions of my actions. it’s not even laziness, which is the source of much of my apathy. while all these excuses may emerge from time to time, may mutate and generate more creative and sometimes convincing arguments for inaction, at the root of the root, the core, if you will, is a sad truth. i am not a l’oreal ad. i am not empowered by the feminist movement, or even a broader human rights discourse. i have not sufficiently internalized oprah and pop psychology or even the warm affirmations of my friends and family. in some distant corner of my brain, on some intangible plane of my psyche, i seem to believe i am not worth the effort.

this dis/belief manifests repeatedly in my bodily care: the treatment of my sciatic nerve, the development of my asthma, and yes, though it is taboo to name it in my self-proclaimed stance of fat positivity, the management of my body’s health and ability. and while i stand by the idea that fatness is not inherently unhealthy just as thinness is not inherently healthy, i do know that the pain i routinely suppress in my body would be significantly alleviated by weight loss. just as i know that the psychic pain i routinely suppress, eschew, or minimize would be significantly alleviated by certain proactive measures: exercise, therapy, asking for help. finally, it’s evident in my relationship to my academic life, both insofar as it profoundly affects my psychic one, and insofar as i am unwilling here too, to take up space, to demand care, to take myself or my work seriously. to quote myself “i take myself seriously as a joke.” (insert secondary joke re: interpellation and citational legacy).

i elaborate this all, not because it’s particularly stunning or new to me but because recently the accumulation of these injuries are congealing into a person that i sometimes do not recognize. into someone who cannot even perform the farce of self care, the farce of confidence. notably, my academic work is suffering. never, in my adult life, have i felt incompetent or unable to satisfactorily complete my school work. while i have certainly questioned my desire to receive a PhD, my desire to adopt the life of an academic, or even the level of success i might achieve (as i have accepted mediocrity), i have never been so demoralized about my purpose, or my efficacy. like a maudlin 17 year old, i bemoan “what’s the point of all this?” i become convinced there is no point to the reading, the writing, the constant nerves and constant production.

and so, as i sip my second cup of tea on yet another bleak valentine’s day morning, i guess i am wondering: how do you love yourself? how do you love yourself when you are incisively aware of your flaws, your failings? when these things overshadow what might be charmed or successful? when you are so open to criticism, when you take it so seriously? when you internalize and relive your (mostly) perceived selfishness, vanity, cruelty, stupidity, homeliness, vapidity, grotesque embodiment? and when you can’t love yourself, when you have seen yourself through your own eyes, and found derision over delight, where do you go, what do you do then?

pos.si.ble

At 4:30am, the freeway to Flint is all but empty. It’s strange to be driving on this side of 23 at this hour. Normally, I would be coming back home after spending the evening with friends at my fave bar. Tired, smoking and singing to stay awake for the hour drive. The sky isn’t as purple in this direction, but hazier: a fine amethyst mist covers the horizon. I’m driving to the hospital to accompany my sister during her DNC. It’s the fifth day of the new year.

I found out about the miscarriage abruptly as it occurred. She’d tried to reach me but I was being evasive. When I finally picked up the call, she was conferenced with another sister, who was explaining how if L just waited 6 more months to try again, she and my other sister could get pregnant together. L had inspired her. Someone said the word “lost” and it registered. I tumbled over my tongue a bit before perception, before articulation. She said “I tried to get a hold of you.” Lost is a funny word. It’s a funny feeling.

I arrive an hour later, locate my sister and her husband on the 3rd floor in pre-op. She is laying in the bed in a lavender gown that blows up like a tent because it’s attached to a hot air shoot. The system is called Bair Paws, and we scheme ways to take it home with us. It seems to be attached to the wall, but hope springs eternal in the evasive heart. We don’t talk about the procedure. We don’t talk about her fear, which is present on her face and in her husband’s posture. We don’t talk about the sadness, cradled on the mantle of all our shoulders. She’s wheeled in at approximately 7am after a bout of relaxants work efficiently to set her to sleep. She’s just cognizant of our goodbye, not enough to see her husband watch her be wheeled away around the corner. The “removal” takes 30 minutes, and another hour and a half pass before she is roused from the anesthetic. Its effects are gone quickly, and in less time that it took to prep, we’re being ushered out of the hospital and back home.

At home we have breakfast, sit on the bed and talk quietly. Her mother in law, our mother, and my niece are in and out. We’re holding hands loosely and we favor the dramatic: “What if I didn’t wake up?” “But you did.” She considers whether she wants to try again, or if her daughter will be OK alone–happy, well loved. I say “Sisters are nice.” She says “They are.” Not usually prone to the sentimental, this moment stands mostly singularly in the acknowledgment of the significance of our friendship. We have been together our whole lives.

Responsibility creeps in steadily, and I leave to drive back home, back to campus, to begin the first day of classes. It’s lighter out now, and the freeways show signs of life. Everyone hustles and bustles and though I’m driving too, I feel the moment suspended. Isolated and dull, it hovers above my head in constant replay: a fragment of lost time, lost memory, lost possibility. Where does hope go now?

the HoJo diaries

The First Night
I started the drive hung-over. Not exactly. In the words of David Cross: I wasn’t that pleasant euphemism, hung over. I was FUCKED UP. And though I felt better about 3 hours in, by the time the drive was over, I was as dazed as I had been when I started. I have driven 11 or so hours, alone. Out of Michigan, across Ohio, across Pennsylvania, into New Jersey. I spent the last half hour in my car, circling the same few blocks over and over again, because my GPS, Susan, does not understand that in order to make a left turn, you have to go right first. In fairness, how could she know? I certainly didn’t. Or maybe she knew and wasn’t telling me. In either case, I shut her down and did it the old fashioned way, asking the kind woman at the Hyatt how to get to a “rival” hotel. I use scare quotes because the Howard Johnson of New Brunwick is the shadiest hotel at which I’ve ever stayed. Even at midnight, I feel skeevy about the stairwells, the outdoor carpets. The indoors aren’t much better. A sad, thin mattress; outlets that don’t have three prongs; a table that wobbles; a hair-dryer that doesn’t turn on; and oddly, a small veranda. At 65$ a night, I suppose I can’t complain but I do anyway, elaborate strings of profanity to the empty room.

What was I doing here? A conference. On affect. Of course. This is the problem with studying feeling: you can drive across the godforsaken terrain known as Ohio, and still not be far enough away. Like a storm cloud that travels with you, all the things I’d tried to suppress leaked out in spurts and before long I am crying again, the fourth time today. By now, the tears are less emphatic and overdone, sliding down my cheeks with little care: more habit than affect. I try to tame my sadness in the dim lights of the HoJo (how the hotel *actually* abbreviates itself); it becomes manageable. A small tightening around my heart only when I let my guard down, instead of an incessant squeezing. Spent, I collapse onto the bed but can’t stop thinking. I read the remainder of a Nora Roberts novel and finally fall asleep, uninterrupted until the morning.

Day One
The next morning, I take my time getting up. The HoJo fairs worse in the daylight. While clean, there is an unmistakable dinginess in the textiles, on the plastic basin of the tub and toilet. I make due, because there is nothing else to make. The hair dryer isn’t working, so I bend over the heater. I thread my computer cord from the bathroom, the only room with open outlets, let alone three prong, across the room to the table. I get dressed, put on makeup. I’m starting to get hungry, so I venture out to the conference site. I think I’ll park my car, and then walk around the campus, which will surely have coffee shops, sandwiches and the like. I am wrong. The Women’s studies complex on the Brunswich (a funny mistake I’m keeping), is in the middle of fucking nowhere, as far as I can tell. I walk around for an hour until I find a student center with an a la carte cafe. I eat outside, for the weather is perfect today, and revel in the rare feeling of accomplishment: I made it. I found food. Things will be OK.

The first day of the conference goes well: I learn that Rutgers is going to feed us for the rest of the conference, and am glad again that I made the decision to come. It also goes quickly, only one graduate student panel before the first keynote, David Eng. When Eng speaks, he is composed, comprehensive, elegant. He speaks about race and reparations, psychic and legal. I don’t pretend I understood everything, but I’m struck by his eloquence, optimism. When I get up the nerve to introduce myself the next day, he is charming in person as well. Graciously learning my name, gushing about how brilliant my advisor is. Turns out, theorists are people, too.

We end shortly after David’s talk, so I take my car back to the HoJo, getting lost for the last time in New Brunswich. When I get back to the hotel, I can’t bring myself to do actual schoolwork, so I read another Nora Roberts, the last in my latest trilogy, order a pizza, over-tip the driver and find comfort, unexpectedly in my isolation and solitude. Flushed from Eng’s brilliance, and transported temporarily to an Irish landscape of love in Robert’s, the lack of love, REAL love, is suppressed for another night.

Day Two
The conference starts unreasonably early. So from the outset, I’m already slammed, and the content and breadth of the day is no relief. There are 3 panels, 2 keynotes. One by Jasbir Puar, a second by Leo Bersani. At lunch I finally make friends, sitting on the shaded steps of the adjacent building. Bersani sits with us, and he easily becomes the most lovable, graceful, dapper surprise of the conference. He is frail and brilliant, thoughtful and kind. It’s hard to express how amazing he was, talking with me about my drive, Flint, movies. Straining to hear our conversations, picking at the well-worn hole in the elbow of his sweater, wiggling his toes in his chocolate suede loafers, which look like fancy house shoes. I’m so charmed by his demeanor, his wit.

The affects studied at the conference are mostly negative, while the atmosphere is convivial, collegiate. I find my mood wavers with each presentation, resulting mostly in sublimity. I am awed, humbled, stuttered into silence by the passion in the room, the brilliance of watching these virtuosos chit chat as though over Sunday brunch. After dinner, a beer, and small talk with my new friends, I return once again to the HoJo. This night, I stay up reading Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. The night is Hitchcock, the hotel the perfect ambiance for reading Freud’s probing work. I might not buy into psychoanalysis, but that night my dreams are wild and vivid, felt in the fiber of my skin and I wake up tingling, out of breath–the taste of someone I just met on my lips. In dreams, I find the attachment I crave, my mouth muttering her name into hers, over and over.

Day Three
Is it an oxymoron to say it’s another beautiful day in Jersey? I’m being too cruel. Aside from the driving, Jersey has treated me well. Today, on this last day, the weather is perfect. The agenda is full, but less intense than the prior day. Two panels, followed by lunch, followed by Lauren Berlant’s keynote, and a concluding panel of the conference’s four major speakers, reflecting on what they learned, with what they hope to move forward. The vibe is, again, jovial and celebratory, due in small part, to the beer and wine brought out early. I couldn’t say what I’ve learned in these three days, so much volleying around my brain. I grapple as best as I can with the complexity, share a cigarette with my conference friend, have a last laugh with Leo. I have a sad sense of finality when he leaves the conference, wondering like my father would, I suppose, if he’ll make it much longer. He seemed so lightly tied to the earth, at odds with his brazen, defiant, wildly present writing.

I return to the HoJo with wry affection. My plans for the evening have fallen through, so I improvise: I’ll take a nap and get up and read Freud instead. My dreams are vivid again; I imagine in sleep that I am opening a door to a well-lit, buttery yellow kitchen, and when I pass through it my eyes open to the off-white popcorn ceiling. It’s dark out now, and the door to my veranda is cracked open. I swing it wide, take in the cool night air–prepare myself to again fill the hours, push away the tenderness in my chest cavity, muddle through the tedium. I echo Liz Grosz’s closing remarks, an idea that has saturated the presentations: every ontological project has an affective register. And the affective is neither about optimism or pessimism. It is simply making life livable. I promise myself I’ll remember this tomorrow, on my long long drive, out of New Brunswich, through Pennsylvania, through Ohio, into Michigan: all alone. I am not optimistic, but I can do this. Alone if needs be, I can live.

my cat is not dead

It was the first time I had ever woken up with someone on Valentine’s Day. I had been in relationships in the past, but that year was first year that I lived alone, away from the prying eyes of my parents, and could spend all night in my own bed with a lover. I’d gotten up earlier to check the forecast, because it was winter in Ohio, and lots of snow was expected. By some miracle, classes were canceled.

A snow day. On Valentine’s Day. Perfect.

Snuggled in bed, his phone rang first. But he ignored it, as he was wont to do. Then my phone rang. I ignored it the first time. But it rang again and it was his roommate and the roommate would never be so insistent unless something was wrong. I answered, gave him my phone, sat, waited. Next to me, he shivered, eyes clouding, disbelief in the lines around his mouth “Are you sure?” My boyfriend’s cat was dead. It sounds almost funny now, like the beginning to a stoner comedy, or an 80s movie about babysitting. How absurd that on such a beautiful perfect morning, you could wake up to a call about your dead cat.

We got dressed. Tried to dig my car out of the snow but it wouldn’t budge. We walked, from my apartment to High Street, where his roommate met us in his car, took us back to his place. His kitten, who was also in many ways my kitten, was on the floor in the kitchen. Little paws stretched straight out, little eyes wide open. We wrapped him in something, a sheet? A towel? Drove him to the vet, where they gave us back his collar, which he lost, which I found again. They performed a catopsy (we laughed), discovered a blood clot that killed him instantly, no pain. We walked to a restaurant, had breakfast, bought dessert for later. We went back to his place, to sit with our other kitten, the brother. Laid on the futon. Watched Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. Ate chocolate. Cried.

Yesterday I thought my cat had died. I was getting ready to leave, and he had been feeling sick, scheduled for a vet appointment for today. I wanted to check on him before I left, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I called and called, and he wouldn’t respond. Almost running through my apartment, I was in tears. Where could he hide? Didn’t cats hide when they were about to die? Why couldn’t I find him? But I did. And my cat was not dead. He is still not dead. He is fine. I am fine. Fine.

When you have mostly forgotten, have accepted, have moved on, and are happy and easy with your memories, when you think only with good faith on your past, when you are not sad just for sad’s sake, when you are fine, these things will happen to you. You will cry in your apartment over the cat you did not find in time. You will cry for the cat to whom you did not say goodbye. This is life reminding you of its balances. This is the future pushing you into your past. This is the present resenting your presence. This is life giving you a snow day, and killing your cat. This is. This. His-its-shit. Sometimes I hate this.

You’ve got your ball, you’ve got your chain

I almost got into a car accident tonight. I started to write “I almost died tonight” but that seems a little over-dramatic, given that I wasn’t actually in one, there’s no way of calculating the likelihood of death if I had been in one. I was returning from a friend’s place, from an evening where I was not my best self, and was routinely snarky with an undercurrent of mega bitch. It/I was shitty, and the most I wanted was to be home, so badly that I questioned leaving it in the first place. So I was driving, safely, stone sober when a car in the left lane slowed to turn. In the right lane, I moved along, but the car behind the turning car evidently did not see my behemoth Olds, and came within inches of ramming sidelong into my car, into me. This is no Dave Matthew’s Band crash. This would have been a “that driver is fucked” crash. My gut managed to occupy both my knees and my throat, and I shook the majority of the drive home. When I had finally stopped, another car, in the exact same scenario, nearly side-slammed me again. Michigan, why are you trying to kill me?

Constantly predicting my own death, I have long assumed that if the cancer doesn’t get me like it gets most, I’ll go in a car. Isolated in the midst of getting from here to there. It’s a kind of poetic death, if you’re into morbidity. You die without ever reaching your destination, without ever feeling the weight lift off your shoulders when you are finally home. Without time to consider your options, why you spent so much time traveling, but very little time satisfied in the journey. I’ve heard the adage about the journey, not the destination, being important. I think this is bullshit. I don’t like being lost, I don’t like movement for the sake of it. I like functionality and form, the accomplishment of doing what you set out to do. I like arriving, and the journey is just that. Tolerable, sometimes enjoyable, but not the reason I get in my car in the first place.

At home now, I can’t sleep. I used to have panic attacks at night. When I lived at home, I was convinced that if I slept, I wouldn’t wake. When I moved, I would hyperventilate, convinced that my father was ill. I would stay up all night, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for dawn. When the sun came, I felt better. What respectable person dies during the daylight? I would call my sister, my mother, chat casually, ensuring that nothing was amiss. I haven’t had an attack like that in maybe a year? It’s hard to remember, so eagerly I put it away–tucked under the sheets as I make the bed, waiting for another night to come up, like that sock you lost but couldn’t be buggered to sift through the layers for.

So I breath. Deliberately, slowly. Wait for the shaking to subside again, wait for my body to relax its wound tension. I can feel the possibility in my bones, in every fiber of my body. I try to distract myself with happy things, a trick my father suggested when I was a girl, and had nightmares. 27 now, I still think of birthday cake. Oddly, I always imagine a white cake with a single candle in the middle, though I have no recollection of ever receiving such a cake on my birthday. If I were a different kind of person, I might say it’s the opposite of dying, that birthdays are an affirmation of living. Really, I think it’s because it was the one day where you got all the attention, all the presents. But I am not a different person. I am me, selfish, flawed, biting, sometimes brutal. I am me, but I didn’t die tonight.